Is there a –parents option for mv like for cp?

cp has a useful feature --parents that allows a file’s directory structure to be copied to another directory:

$ cp -v --parents source/directory/from target/
‘source/directory/from’ -> ‘target/source/directory/from’

How do I similarly move a file?

Answers:

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Method 1

Not directly, at least not for GNU mv according to its man page. A possible workaround would be adding a function like this:

pmv(){
    source=$1
    target=${2%/}
    mkdir -p -- "$target/$(dirname -- "$source")" &&
      mv -- "$source" "$target/$(dirname -- "$source")/"
}

Add that function to your shell’s configuration file (~/.bashrc if you are using bash) and run it like this:

pmv source/directory/from target/

Method 2

Is there a way to move a file in a similar fashion?

None. mv is rather simple utility which uses system call rename (atomic FS operation) if possible — when source/destination are on the same block device, otherwise it falls back to cp behavior. Actually rename would fail even if you src/dst are the same device mounted to different mount points which Linux does allow.

So, when you need to move files like:

cp -v --parents source/directory/from target/

you can just think of:

mv source target/

but keep in mind that it would move the whole content all the parents dir could have inside along the way, so you’d need to deal with that later — I mean unlinking all those extra-files if you need to have the same result as cp --parents would provide.

Sooner or later you’d realize, that what you’re doing could be easily accomplished with cp/rm approach instead. And cp‘s -l can be used to make it working fast, meanwhile allowing to use beloved --parents. That’s the reason mv wouldn’t have anything such fancy as cp‘s --parents.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0